Site Mobile Navigation

Old-School Cornerbacks Have Taught a New Generation

One day during his rookie season with San Diego in 2006, Antonio Cromartie sat mesmerized in front of a television. His position coach, Kevin Ross, had summoned him to watch two cornerbacks who set the standard for excellence. Finding videotape was easy: they played for the same team, at the same time.

As Cromartie came to learn, Lester Hayes and Mike Haynes dominated for the Raiders in parts of four seasons, from 1983 to 1986, forming what is widely considered the best cornerback tandem in N.F.L. history. They eliminated receivers and tormented quarterbacks with contrasting, if complementary, styles, and along the way inspired this generation of speedy and physical cornerbacks — Nnamdi Asomugha and Asante Samuel with Philadelphia, and Cromartie and Darrelle Revis with the Jets, who will face Oakland on Sunday.

Before there was Revis Island, there was “my eminent domain,” Hayes’s term for his side of the field.

“If they’re not, I would want to know who is,” said the Jets’ defensive backs coach, Dennis Thurman, a contemporary of Hayes and Haynes, when asked if they were the finest cornerback tandem ever.

On his own, each player excelled. His hands caked in Stickum, Hayes intercepted 18 passes, including 5 in the postseason, during the Raiders’ 1980 championship season, when he was selected as the league’s defensive player of the year. Across the country in New England, Haynes made the Pro Bowl in six of his first seven seasons, starring as a cornerback and a punt returner.

Photo

Lester Hayes (37) and Mike Haynes were so-called shutdown cornerbacks for the Raiders in the 1980s, before the term became fashionable.Credit
NFL Photos

It was at that sixth Pro Bowl, in 1983, that their union became, in Hayes’s words, predestined. There, he shared a revelation with Haynes: you will be a Raider. A “Star Wars” fanatic, Hayes said that the Force had told him so.

“I didn’t believe him,” said Haynes, who later that year held out from the Patriots to force a trade. “But the thing about Lester, he was usually right.”

Hayes was right so often that his position coach, the Hall of Fame defensive back Willie Brown, allowed him to leave his man if he sensed that the quarterback was looking at a different receiver. In colorful language, Hayes would taunt opposing players, telling them that they would be fortunate if they caught a pass.

“It was always that we — the two of us — were going to do something, not just him,” said Haynes, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1997. “It wasn’t my style, but in the end, I came to like that.”

Haynes played with elegance and grace, matching size (6 feet 2 inches, 192 pounds) with a sprinter’s speed. He had long arms, a short memory and an unquenchable desire for knowledge, a product of his first day of practice as a rookie with New England. Every receiver beat him for a touchdown, he said, and so from then on, he committed himself to learning everything he could about his craft.

When his position meeting ended, he would sit in with the receivers, then the quarterbacks, looking for insight. In training camp, he roomed with the Hall of Fame receiver James Lofton and peppered him with questions.

Photo

The Jets' Darrelle Revis (24) and Antonio Cromartie are forging a dominance all their own.Credit
Kevin Terrell/Associated Press

Beneath Hayes’s brash and quirky exterior — among his stated hobbies were studying Smurfs and the spawning habits of North American fish — was an inquisitive mind, one that savored the challenge of vanquishing top receivers. Hayes (6 feet, 200 pounds) would crouch low and thump them at the snap, using his allotted 5 yards of contact to disrupt their timing and throw off their route.

Often, Hayes shoved his hands into the receiver’s face. And like the linebacker he was at Texas A&M, he loved to hit.

In their era, teams started playing more zone coverage to offset the evolving passing game. Haynes and Hayes, though, remained stubborn, adhering to a man-to-man approach that stood out, especially in Super Bowl XVIII, when they held Washington’s big-play threats, Charlie Brown and Art Monk, to four total catches in a 38-9 victory.

More than two decades have passed since they retired — Hayes after the 1986 season, Haynes after 1989 — and the position has evolved, though not to Haynes’s liking. As teams spread the field with three, four or even five wide receivers, many modern cornerbacks, he said, are emphasizing coverage over tackling, and are not complete players. Haynes is busy with his training and development company, Play It Forward Solutions, but when he does have time to watch football, he said he was amazed that some cornerbacks seemed to treat games like the Pro Bowl.

“They’re not playing like that yard, or extra 2 yards, matter,” Haynes said. “We always felt like when you stretched the chains out, that tackle mattered because you pushed the guy back, they didn’t get the first down. That seems to have been lost.”

In his next sentence, however, Haynes mentioned a few exceptions: Asomugha (“great size, great strength and great ability”), Revis (“to be a great corner, you have to be a great athlete, and he is”) and Cromartie (“he can jump like you can’t believe”). As it happens, a year after that film session with Ross, Cromartie was selected as the N.F.L. Alumni’s best defensive back of the season. Asked whom he wanted to present him with the award, Cromartie did not hesitate. He chose Haynes.

A version of this article appears in print on September 25, 2011, on Page SP6 of the New York edition with the headline: Old-School Cornerbacks Have Taught a New Generation. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe